August 22 , 2008
Grandparents as People
If I seem to lead off a lot of newsletters with a piece by Julie Douglas, it's because I love anything she writes, including a vacation request! I enjoy the way good writers shape an idea and wed it to particular words and sentence rhythm. This month's column on Family Reading ranks among my favorites.
"My Grandma Moore was a spunky woman who lived in a semi-spooky house that my siblings and I suspected might be haunted. A young mother in 1926, she lost both her husband and her own mother. To support her two little boys, she bought an old house and took in boarders, including the man who became my grandfather. She enjoyed the occasional “High Ball” and read True Crime magazine and had a parakeet named Skipper. In the long- unused bedrooms on the second floor, a chest of drawers held bullet casings and postcards from exotic locations, mementos from her sons’ tours in WWII. She claimed that her own mother had been a friend of Buffalo Bill’s; she taught me how to do embroidery; and she had bottles of milk delivered right to a metal box on her doorstep..." (Click here to read the rest.)
Museum Conference, Independence, October 3-4
"Cutting Edge Strategies for Museums" is our first in what I hope will be a long sequence of conferences to help museums achieve results in the critical areas of operations: visitor experiences and relationships with schools. We have spread the program over two days to allow maximum exposure to nationally-recognized achievements in these two areas. Our featured presenters are leaders in the field from the Conner Prairie Living History Museum in Indiana and the Virginia Association of Museums. Our program also includes break-out sessions with curriculum specialists from Kansas and Missouri to help participants apply what they learn in plenary sessions.
I've posted a conference announcement and registration form on our web site. It's affordable, and I hope irresistable! I hope to see you there!
A Story of a Grandmother's Wedding Dress
A few weeks ago my colleagues and I attended a memorial service for the grandmother of our colleague, Megan Cahill. For several months, Megan had been developing an article on her grandmother's wedding dress and had visited a museum in Virginia, where her grandmother had lived, to get more details about the dress. Now is a good time to share Megan's story.
The Piquant Problem of Marketing Charettes
The museum services program I manage is about as misunderstood as Dr. Pepper used to be! Two weeks ago I conducted one of the best charettes of my life at the Bates County Museum, and in the first couple minutes of discussion realized that the board president had done me the favor of expressing a reservation about the content of the day's work. He said he felt proud of the incredible amount of work the board had done and thought they had gone far beyond anyone's hopes or expectations. Therefore, he said, he might be something of a nay-sayer if what we intended to do was devote ourselves to a critique of the museum.
Thank God for candor when it comes in time to address concerns! I told him we believe in approaching museum improvements from a base of affirmation. We don't come into town with guns blazing. But how would I overcome that fear in marketing the program? I don't think it would help to say this: Apply for a Charette -- We Promise Not to Damage You.
I am gladly accepting applications for this special, tailored museum service. In 2009 the service will work more like a consulting relationship spread over several months. We're helping museums identify specific things to convert to fundable projects -- things that can make an immediate difference in effectiveness.
I loved the two days I spent with the people in Butler, Missouri. They have indeed, accomplished a great deal. More important, they have a store of talent and imagination that can accomplish even more, one step at a time. See the new video tour they just posted on the Border War Network site at YouTube!
A Surprise Honor from the Sac and Fox Nation
A month ago I went to Stroud, Oklahoma to visit my friends, Sandra and Henrietta Massey, who created the content for the touring Sac and Fox heritage exhibit, "Homeland." (We now have two copies of this portable exhibit available for continued touring. Contact Clarice Britton here at MHC to reserve dates.)
The exhibit was on display in the Tribal Library, along with some wonderful additional displays to fill the space with memories and meanings. I was taken to the tribal offices to meet the Treasurer, Mike Hackbarth, who ushered me into a conference room for a surprise presentation from the tribe and from the Massey Family.
Mike is about to drape a Pendleton woolen blanket over my shoulders. The blanket contains the Delaware Tribe's turtle motif, a symbol of the Creation. The turtle is a significant symbol to the Sac and Fox, also.
Then Henrietta Massey, who has been the guiding energy behind the tribe's Language Recovery Program, gave me a hand-made ceremonial shirt with traditional ribbon work, including a breast cancer symbol over the heart in memory of Sandra Bouman. Henrietta and her daughter, Sandra Massey, hosted me for the weekend, and Sandra took me to a true test of endurance, the Oklahoma City Pow-Wow. We arrived around 9:00 p.m. and Sandra announced that unless I cried "uncle!" we were there "for the duration." It was an occasion of delight for me, as we sat there and saw singers and dancers from so many tribes competing for prizes or just singing and dancing for the joy of doing it. I began to notice the passage of time around 3:00 a.m. and was asleep the instant my head hit the pillow at 4!
